Articles for Writers

On Navigating 300 Rejections and Learning to Write Fearlessly with Maurice Carlos Ruffin

subclub.substack.com – Thursday February 6, 2025

Welcome to our interview series, On Something with Somebody! This week, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, shares his thoughts on being a joyous and aggressive writer, the many rejections of his early career, celebrating with ice cream, and his submissions strategy.

"During a seven-year stretch, my work was rejected over 300 times by literary magazines. I had to accept that if I wanted to publish, I had to change both the work and my approach."

Kailey DelloRusso: When you were first starting out, how did you take rejection? And what did you learn from those first few rejections? 

Maurice Carlos Ruffin: I didn't take it well. The first rejection I can recall was from my undergraduate literary magazine. Frankly, I was devastated. I stopped writing stories for about four years and stopped submitting for maybe six.

Later, I came back to writing and went to grad school. I still got rejected quite often. In fact, during a seven-year stretch, my work was rejected over 300 times by literary magazines. Fortunately, I can thank Stephen King's On Writing for giving me perspective and gumption. He was rejected, I think 200 times before the age of 18. He used to pin the rejection slips on the wall above his typewriter. How could I complain?

Ultimately, I had to accept that if I wanted to publish, I had to change both the work and my approach. I sharpened my stories and became more strategic about my submission strategy. Basically, I made the stories sound more like the place I'm from (my weird, wonderful New Orleans) and made them faster-paced and more emotionally charged. For submissions, I used Duotrope, which allowed me to figure out which high-quality magazines I had the best shot of being published by. I entered many contests and won three. As Biggie Smalls said, "I went from negative to positive."

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Trying to write a novel? A Marrakech ‘book camp’ might unlock your literary skills

ft.com – Monday January 27, 2025

There’s nothing like shopping to form a bond between strangers. It was the glue for two women of letters who met at Lahore Literary Festival a few years ago. “We ended up hanging out, talking about books and shopping. There is a great picture of us in an old haveli. I remember your hair was bright blue, and a blue parrot settled on your shoulder,” says Bloomsbury editor Alexandra Pringle of her encounter with future creative partner, the writer and historian Alex von Tunzelmann. The blue hair is long gone, although von Tunzelmann has gone for purple ahead of their next writing masterclass.

Together with their mutual friend, editor and literary consultant Faiza Khan (Pringle had hired her to run the Bloomsbury list in Delhi), they talked of opening a boutique with a curation of goods and artefacts truffled from their travels. “We realised that our love of objects is founded in storytelling – I do believe everything holds a history and a life,” says Pringle, who lives on a houseboat in Chelsea filled with Staffordshire figures, fine porcelain and ancient finds from Morocco. The idea of a writing retreat then blossomed with the input of author and journalist Nesrine Malik, and, in 2022, Silk Road Slippers was founded.

There are myriad writing retreats out there, often staged in picturesque locales such as the south of France and largely attracting a certain tranche of middle-class England. This literary double act, however, was determined to establish a fully immersive workshop with hands-on exercises, seminars, one-on-one feedback and the central attraction of a guest author. The masterclasses held in Marrakech got underway in November 2023 with Shehan Karunatilaka as the first guest author. Esther Freud (23-28 February) and Alan Hollinghurst (2-7 March) are top billing for the upcoming spring masterclasses, which cost £3,200 per person (with a £1,000 deposit payable on acceptance).

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Chicagoan Charlie Donlea on Writing Best-Selling Mysteries

classicchicagomagazine.com – Monday January 27, 2025

With titles like Don’t Believe It, Some Choose Darkness, and The Girl Who Was Taken, you know that you are in for a thriller where surprises lurk around every corner. No wonder Chicagoan Charlie Donlea is a USA Today and a number one best selling author internationally. Along with a Charlie Donlea mystery to get me through this week’s artic cold I added a further stay-at-home pleasure of speaking with the Chicago best-selling author himself about his craft.

Writing the manuscript for his tenth thriller is keeping Donlea indoors this week as well as working with a team to develop his Twenty Years Later into a television series. He may will have news to share soon. His newest hardcover Guess Again will be released in August 2025.

Not only do we love the plot twists that keep you guessing until the final pages, the clever red herrings we fall for and the great destinations where Donlea’s novels are set (including Chicago and Door County as well as faraway places like St. Lucia) we find characters you care for, something lacking in many mysteries.

Here’s what we learned from Donlea on a day when it was two degrees in Chicago.

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Why do editors 'ghost'

bukiebooks.substack.com – Saturday January 25, 2025

I saw some recent discourse about this on the Substack app, but it’s been a topic of heated conversation within publishing, between writers and agents, and between agents and editors for the past few years. Some of you may recall Jonathan Karp’s infamous mandate that editors must respond to agent submissions within a month1, after he learned about ghosting.

In the past few years, there have been more instances of editors simply not responding to submissions from agents. They will respond to the pitch, but after receiving the manuscript, neither reject nor ask for a call, even after multiple follow-ups and sometimes even after calls and auction rules are set.

If you are an editor I work with who follows me here, this isn’t about you. You are all perfect. Also, thanks!

Why is this happening?

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